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Chapter 4 (Draft): John Locke And The Hobbesian Hypothesis: How A Very Similar Colonial Prejudice Found Its Way Into The Natural Rights Justification Of Private Property, Karl Widerquist, Grant Mccall
Chapter 4 (Draft): John Locke And The Hobbesian Hypothesis: How A Very Similar Colonial Prejudice Found Its Way Into The Natural Rights Justification Of Private Property, Karl Widerquist, Grant Mccall
Karl Widerquist
This chapter is a preliminary draft of Chapter 4 of the book, "Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy." The role of this chapter is to show that what we call "the Hobbesian Hypothesis" is an essential premise in John Locke's justification of private property. The Hobbesian hypothesis, in this context, is the claim that everyone is better off in a society with private land and resource ownership (even if they own no land or resources) than they could reasonably except to be in a society in which these resources remained unowned and people lived as hunter-gatherers. This chapter does not …
Chapter 3 (Draft) The Hobbesian Hypothesis: How A Colonial Prejudice Became An Essential Premise In The Most Popular Justification Of Government, Karl Widerquist, Grant Mccall
Chapter 3 (Draft) The Hobbesian Hypothesis: How A Colonial Prejudice Became An Essential Premise In The Most Popular Justification Of Government, Karl Widerquist, Grant Mccall
Karl Widerquist
This chapter is a draft of Chapter Three of the book that Grant McCall and I are writing. The book is called, "Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy." This chapter shows now Hobbes introduce an empirical claim into his most influential justification of the state. We call this claim the Hobbesian hypothesis: everyone is better off under the authority of a sovereign government than everyone would be outside of that authority. The chapter argue that this hypothesis is a strong, counterfactual, empirical claim about people in small-scale stateless societies that has not been well-established by empirical evidence.